Definitions // Current

define 'LIBERAL' for me please?

I keep seeing all these posts mention liberal this and libs that, and liberal blah... more

dariusvons
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Wikipedia History Lesson: Sons of Liberty

Wikipedia's hard power definition focuses on the international politics of hard power - one country using military and economic power to pressure another country. Hard power starts smaller though.

All politics is local, and all violence starts with one person in conflict with another. Countries start with armies, armies start with militias, militias start with gangs, and gangs start with street toughs with a cashflow. Hard power starts on the streets, and works its way up to the national level from there.

Hence today's history lesson: the Sons of Liberty. You may have heard of them if you had to read "Johnny Tremain" in school (a patriotic revisionist book written during World War 2 when patriotic revisionism was the norm), or if you drink a lot of Samuel Adams Boston Lager. These guys were a loose network of terrorist cells in the East Coast of the United States, which continually harassed the British and escalated petty legal issues between the colonies and the British government.

Why? Rule number 1: Follow the money. They were almost certainly funded by people like John Hancock, who was an improbably rich merchant trader (*cough cough smuggler*) and a founder of the independent United States. Smuggling is only profitable when there are tariffs or other trade restrictions, and back in the mercantilist days of the British Empire, it was mighty profitable. Hancock's shipping company stood to make an even bigger fortune if he was allowed to trade with whomever he pleased. Thus, he needed to get Boston out of the yoke of port tax collectors and British army. John Hancock wasn't the only one - every American port had merchants with the same idea.

The Boston Tea Party (and many other Tea Parties in ports across the US) was the destruction of lots of valuable property to protest the Tea Act, which taxed tea imported to the American colonies. Tea came from that most valuable of British colonies, India, and it was expensive. The prime source of caffeine in that day, some economists think it helped people work longer and harder, and thus make more money. Of course, if the Americans were independent of the British Empire, they could import all the tea (or anything else they want) at a much cheaper price than from London. All the taxes that lead to the Revolutionary War ended up being something like 2% of income for Americans back then, and that was apparently enough to stoke the separatism into all out war of independence. Rule number 2: If there is enough money to be made by violence, someone will pay to start that violence.

The Sons of Liberty carried out things like "tar and feathering," which sounds almost cute and quaint, until you remember it involves taking a political official, and pouring boiling tar on them. I'm not a fan of having boiling anything poured over me, and the symbolic nature of the violence against these targets was one of America's first encounters with terrorism. Rule number 3: One man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter.

This terrorist group eventually grew into a "well regulated militia," and with political leadership, time and money from France (yes, the Continental Army was a foreign backed insurgency), we were able to make it too expensive for Britain to keep fighting us. That is why we celebrate terrorism, insurgents and most importantly explosives on the Fourth of July.

Class dismissed.Wikipedia's hard power definition focuses on the international politics of hard power... more

HardPower
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5 months ago
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Dictionaries recognize same-sex marriage—who knew?

"Opponents of gay marriage generally have relied on two authorities, the Bible and the dictionary—the divine word and the defined word. A 2006 friend-of-the-court brief filed on behalf of anti-gay-marriage organizations in a Maryland marriage case cited no fewer than seven dictionaries to make its point. And when the Iowa Supreme Court legalized gay marriage last week, it ignored the state's plea to abide by a dictionary definition that limited marriage to "the legal union of a man and a woman."

But in their latest editions, the dictionaries have begun to switch sides—though until recently, no one seemed to have much noticed. The American Heritage Dictionary, Black's Law Dictionary, and Webster's have all added same-sex unions to their definitions of marriage. The Oxford English Dictionary is on the way. The right-wing Web site WorldNetDaily broke the news in March about Webster's, reporting that the dictionary had "resolved the argument" over gay marriage by applying the ancient term "to same-sex duos."

How, exactly, has the wording in the dictionaries changed? American Heritage went first, adding this to its definition of marriage in 2000: "A union between two persons having the customary but usually not the legal force of marriage: a same-sex marriage." In 2003, Webster's included in its definition "the state of being united to a person of the same sex in a relationship like that of a traditional marriage." In 2004, in its eighth edition, Black's added "same-sex marriage" to its marriage entry, recognizing that "same-sex couples have successfully challenged the laws against same-sex marriage" in a number of states. Even more interesting, 2008's Webster's Contemporary School and Office Dictionary says nothing gendered about marriage at all. The entry simply states that marriage is "the state of being united to another person as a contractual relationship according to law or custom." And the king of them all, the Oxford English Dictionary, has a draft entry that's yet to be published in which the definition of marriage includes the phrase "long-term relationships between partners of the same sex," according to the Associated Press.""Opponents of gay marriage generally have relied on two authorities, the Bible and the... more